Media, Mediation, Time and Communication

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis: A Semiotic Approach to Audiovisual Multimedia Communication
Ulla Oksanen, Helsinki
Abstract
In the continuum of audiovisual narration from the early days of cinema until today there has at times emerged the intention to study in depth this language of images and sounds and to develop it radically. The inquiry into these kinds of meanings, and the dynamics connected to them, has in particular been approached from the semiotic point of view. The attempt to comprehend and construct audiovisual narration as inner speech and dialogism offers an attractive frame of reference for perceiving the nature of communication in modern multimedia interaction as semiosis, the action of signs. In this article the change in audiovisual narration, from the semiotic point of view, can be reduced to the following tendencies: from monologism to dialogism, from diachronic (successive) to synchronic (simultaneous) and from syntagmatic (co-ordinative) to paradigmatic (associative). These tendencies are exemplified by the views of Lev Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sergei Eisenstein and Jean-Luc Godard. In my argument C.S. Peirces concept of communicational dialogism will be of particular importance. It is a central concept in audiovisual narration as well as in hyper- and multimedial interactive communication, and in the dynamic process of the function of signs, dialogic semiosis, it is a fundamental dimension. Keywords: audiovisual; multimedia; dialogism; synchrony; paradigm; semiotics; dialogic semiosis.

194

Ulla Oksanen

INTRODUCTION

From the birth of audiovisual narration until today, there have been attempts to reach reality or produce illusions of it through real-like phenomena or more or less immersive experiences. This kind of transition from magic lantern stories to multimedia1 can also be traced as a continuum of audiovisual narration, where at times other kinds of aspirations have also emerged, namely the intentions of studying in depth the meaning of this language of images and sounds and to develop it radically. The inquiry into these kinds of meanings, and the dynamics connected to them, has in particular been approached from the semiotic point of view. The attempt to comprehend and construct audiovisual narration as inner speech and dialogism offers an attractive frame of reference for perceiving the nature of communication in modern multimedia interaction as semiosis, the action of signs. The top level of the multidimensional model by Tella & Mononen-Aaltonen (2000), introduced in this volume, consists of the background flows of communication and mediation, whose influences are reflected to all levels of the model. These flows are important in audiovisual communication as well. Along with them, however, there are other unique flows of changes, which, from the semiotic point of view, can be channelled to the following tendencies: from monologism to dialogism, from diachronic (successive) to synchronic (simultaneous) and from syntagmatic (co-ordinative) to paradigmatic (associative). In this article these tendencies are illustrated with the views of Lev Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, Sergei Eisenstein and Jean-Luc Godard.

Hypermedia is here defined as an interactive manner of expression based on links. It may consist of texts, images, moving images and sounds. By multimedia I mean digitally worked up interactive programs, which may consist of texts, images, moving images and sounds and which are distributed as CD-ROMs, DVDs or network products.

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

195

In my argument, C.S. Peirces concept of communicational dialogism in the communication background flow is of particular importance. Communicational dialogism is a central concept in audiovisual narration as well as in hyper- and multimedial1 interactive communication. In the dynamic process of the function of signs, dialogic semiosis, it is a fundamental dimension. Even the context and the medium itself are always essentially present in this semiotic process and appear as a cultural interaction, intermediation (Lehtonen 1998) or to use Tella & Mononen-Aaltonens term, as intermediality. This article will now concentrate on certain instances of change flows, which, together, seem to characterise the transition towards hypermedial narration. The chapter Inner Speech and Eisensteins Idea of Montage will deal with the concept of dialogism as well as with its obvious counter poles: Eisensteins inner monologue and Vygotskys inner speech. In the chapter From Monologue to Dialogue: Bakhtins Inner Dialogism, dialogism will be described in its Bakhtinian meaning. The chapter From Diachrony to Synchrony, and Syntagm to Paradigm will examine the change towards multimedial narration on these axes using the ideas of Eisensteins and Godards cinematic theory. Finally, in the chapter Total Mental Image and Dialogic Semiosis communicational dialogism will be defined as a fundamental dimension of dialogic semiosis in the light of total mental image and Peirces pragmatic idea of signs.

INNER SPEECH AND EISENSTEINS IDEA OF MONTAGE

At the beginning of the 1920s, Sergei Eisenstein, film theorist and director, was fascinated by the attractions from the early age of cinema, by the principles of showing and making perceptible. He

196

Ulla Oksanen

started to emphasise what he saw as the fundamental essence of the appeal and impressiveness of the cinema, indeed all the arts, namely the principle of conflict. In the intersection of nature and industry there is art (Eisenstein 1978, 106). On the basis of this kind of Hegelian thinking, the world is seen as a continuous development of two conflicting opposites in interaction, in other words, as a continuum of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Eisenstein even compared montage cutting to an efficient combustion engine in a car, where the attraction shots, defined by cutting, form a series of explosions, whose dynamic energy runs the caror in his case the film. The same principle of conflict was visualised, said Eisenstein, in Japanese pictography, where two separate signs are summed up and explode into abstract ideas.
eye + water = to cry mouth + bird = to sing door + ear = to hear (Eisenstein 1978, 108)

Likewise, in Eisensteins thinking when two still pictures are placed next to each other, they produce a new idea: ... because successive things are not actually placed adjacent to each other, but one upon another (Eisenstein 1978, 109). According to Juri Lotman (1989, 67), Eisensteins montage, the so-called intellectual montage, activates the boundary of thought and changes it into a principal medium of meaning (e.g. Kerensky mounting the stairs in the film October). In 1927 a well-known formalist Boris Eikhenbaum presented a view in which he emphasised the close connection of the language of the cinema and the so-called inner speech. In his opinion, montage, as well as common speech, consists of fragmentary expressions rather than complicated and logical sentences. Many scholars (among others Wollen 1977; Broms 1984; Hietala 1994) see the decisive role of Eikhenbaum in the development of Eisensteins theory of montage and the inner monologue. However, the

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

197

concept of inner speech has been analysed more profoundly by Lev Vygotsky in his writings (1920) and later in his book Thought and Language (1934). One of the basic principles of Vygotsky in this work is that the genetic roots of language and speech are separate (Vygotski 1982, 99). The decisive meaning in the development of thought is in inner or silent speech, by which Vygotsky refers to the junction where thinking is transformed into the lingual, and language into thought. According to Vygotsky inner speech is primarily thinking in terms of pure meanings, or it functions on the semiotic level of speech. In other words, what in Vygotskys ideas is expressed in language mainly as diachronic, successive, appears in thought as synchronic, simultaneous. (Vygotski 1982, 243244) The inner speech, hovering between word and thought, also has according to Vygotsky its characteristic features. Inner speech, by contrast with outer speech, essentially reflects a clearly different, new and independent function of speech: poetry-like silent speech to oneself. Inner speech is also simplified and compressed as it opens up with difficulty to others and is hardly intelligible without context. It consists of apparent fragmentariness, which makes it elliptic, including open gaps. So inner speech deviates by its syntax from written speech by being predicative and often even idiomatic, like a dialect. (Vygotski 1982, 46-47, 178179, 230244) After 1928 Eisenstein started to move away from strict antagonistic dialectics and emphasised montage as an emerging synthesis of the different senses. After familiarising himself with James Joyces novel Ulysses, Eisensteins thinking began to move towards a more organic, softer view of cinema, in which, instead of conflicts, he started to stress harmony and holism. (Malmberg 1974, 34) The filmic inner speech or inner monologue now became the cornerstone of Eisensteins new idea of cinema. This kind of monologue, which as a structure forms a

198

Ulla Oksanen

stream-of-consciousness-like reconstruction of the thinking process, was a continuation of the earlier mentioned idea of intellectual montage from the beginning of the 1920s. Though Eisensteinean inner cinematic speech, the inner monologue, is fundamentally thinking with pure meanings, the nature of it is described as flexible, pictorial, non-logical and mythic. Even though it is reminiscent of language, it uses, not only natural language as its material, but also pictures, sounds and writing. (Willemen 1983, 155; cited in Hietala 1994, 49) Eisenstein, too, was convinced of the fact that inner speech was, unlike outer verbal speech, closer to sense- and image-based thinking (Wollen 1977, 29). As Eisensteins view of montage approached stream-ofconsciousness-like speech, he also started to emphasise counterpoint or polyphony (a term he was to use later) as a central method and goal in cinema. Eisenstein compares harmonic polyphony to a developing consciousness, which while creating contact between separate phenomena of reality, experiences everything as a simultaneous great unity (Jalander 1990, 79). On the basis of psychoanalytic theory this kind of inner monologue can also be understood as a meeting and negotiation point or intersection of textual surfaces.

FROM MONOLOGUE TO DIALOGUE: BAKHTINS INNER DIALOGISM

Unlike Vygotsky, his contemporary Mikhail Bakhtin considered the nature of the whole of human consciousness as dialogic. A word, a language or a whole culture can become dialogised. Because of this it is at the same time an orientation of any living discourse (Holqvist 1990, 427429). According to Bakhtin, the literature of Dostoevsky broke the form of the established linear and monologic novel in an epoch-making manner. Whereas Goethe

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

199

strove to see the consciousnesses of the same person as successive (diachronic), Dostoevskys work was characterised by a tendency to describe those phases of consciousness as simultaneous (synchronic) and parallel. Different persons seem to meet each other in a spatial dimension. As the events are mainly placed in the present, or as if in the eternity, his novels lack causality, allusions to the past, the environment and education. The fact that Dostoevsky viewed life as an interaction, as voices that sing in different tones of the same theme, Bakhtin regarded this as polyphonic and at same time thoroughly dialogic. Bakhtin also described this kind of dialogue as an almost universal phenomenon that covered all human speech and relations and all expressions of human life, indeed, everything that matters. No idea, he said, is simply able to survive in the isolated consciousness of a human being, ...if it remains there only, it degenerates and dies (Bahtin 1991, 5171, 132; translated by C. Emerson). In other words, only by bringing ideas into connection with other consciousnesses and strange ideas can thoughts live and give birth to new ideas. In Bakhtins views dialogisation can also occur in the human consciousness in an internal monologue. This he calls inner dialogue2, (microdialogue in the revised edition in 1963), a dialogue with oneself. Dialogue can also be part of the whole structure of words, and intervene at all semantic and expressive layers. Dialogue penetrates into every single word and causes a struggle and resonance between the voices (Bahtin 1991, 115, 279, 392397). The addresser, the author, and the addressee, the reader,
2

Unlike Bakhtin, Vygotsky considered the written language and inner speech as the monologic form of language, and only oral speech was dialogic. Vygotsky saw dialogism as a chain of reactions that presupposes that partners know the essence of the matter and whose looks, gestures and tones add a zest to the conversation. (Vygotski 1982, 235) However, a closer study of Vygotskys writings on inner speech suggests, according to Wertsch, that Vygotsky in effect saw the dialogic (in Bakhtian terms) nature of speech. A more appropriate term for inner speech would thus be inner dialogue. (Wertsch 1980, 151152; cited in Tella & Mononen-Aaltonen 1998, 25) Accordingly, on the same grounds, Eisensteinean inner monologue could also be interpreted as inner dialogue.

200

Ulla Oksanen

are both part of the dialogue. According to Sderbergh Widding (1997, 14) the spectator of cinema is also an active partner in the cinematic experience, because he or she has the decisive role as an aesthetic subject, as an interpreter of meanings. Answering to the impulses produced by the film (or novel) the addressee ultimately creates the true essence of the film (or novel) and in a fundamental way gives birth to his or her subjective experience. Bakhtin understands the thoughts and voices of the parties to the dialogue as a unity of intersecting levels, as a polyphonic system that creates harmony and resonance or produces dissonances (Bahtin 1991, 358). Similarly, Kristeva sees texts as multidimensional intersections that endlessly bear traces of other texts. This intersection is at the same time the dialogue among several writings, where the author, the addressee and the characters, as well as the present and the past cultural context meet (Kristeva 1993, 2226). So to Kristeva the Bakhtinian dialogism also means intertextuality, the mutual communication and quotation which comprises language itself. In the age of the Net these kinds of ideas, from the cognitive semiotics viewpoint, can also be considered a polysemic network of signification, where the signification itself is a wholeness composed of several links and junctions, a synthesis of meanings 3. It seems that in the debate concerning the nature of network-based media and multimedia narration, these kinds of views of the network character of meaning will increase in the future.

A polysemic network of meanings refers to the theory of network-based meaning and cognitive semiotics (Norvig & Lakoff 1987, 197198; cited in Yl-Kotola 1998, 57).

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

201

FROM DIACHRONY TO SYNCHRONY, AND SYNTAGM TO PARADIGM

Inner speech or dialogue proceeding in the Eisensteinean streamof-consciousness way, will in Broms ideas above all be manifested as emotional and logical narration. This is, in his view, characterised by repetition of lingual and cinematic expression, psychic drumming. This kind of repetition refers, according to Broms to mythic oriental consciousness, which, unlike its counterpole, natural-science-like western consciousness, is characterised by synchrony, a tendency to see the world as simultaneous and repetitive. It also means a tendency to see the world as devoid of linear continuity, a place where causality is abolished and a new sense of time created: the overlapping of its levels and cyclicality will gain power. (Broms 1984, 6775, 133) Juri Lotman also views the form of Eisensteinean montage as a system of jump-like transitions, which as such foregrounds rather the structure of life than the logic of incidents. Rhythmic repetition lessens the visible and emphasises the abstract, logical or associative meanings. (Lotman 1989, 51, 69) Broms (1984, 146, 169), referring to Lotman and Russian semioticians, also sees the change of scientific paradigm in the long run leading towards unlinear ways of thinking, to oriental consciousness, nocturnal knowledge, where a deep-reaching change of course towards pictorial language and symbolic knowledge has begun. YlKotola, too, holds that as an alternative to linearity the time exerience can be converted into the fragmentary, the curvilinear and the cyclic (e.g. Eisensteinean repetition). He accordingly suggests that the fundamental questions of unlinearity be approached rather by means of the concept of paradigm. Eisensteins experiments at the beginning of 1920 (e.g. the God sequence and the stair sequence in October which were based on repetition) could, in his opinion, be considered early attempts to break away

202

Ulla Oksanen

from syntagmatic4, process-like thinking (e.g. classic cinematic continuity) and direct itself towards paradigmatic, associative narration, and towards structure. (Yl-Kotola 1998, 249) The tendency towards a new kind of associative and paradigmatic thinking did not begin to take its audiovisual form on a large scale until the time of alternative or counter cinema and the music videoand later with hyper and multimedia narration experiments. Yl-Kotola suggests that especially in films directed by Jean-Luc Godard after 1980 radical signs of change can be distinguished. He considers the Histoire(s) du Cinma (produced in the 1990s) in particular to be a kind of audiovisual hybrid and a representative of a transition period from the traditional audiovisual narration to hypermedial narration. Yl-Kotola, unlike Baudrillard, considers the fragmentariness of texts (meaning widely any significant element in culture) to be a key factor in interactiveness, as it makes these texts suit the information network. The abundance and richness of references in Godards texts, he argues, function as built-in-encouragement to associative navigation. (Yl-Kotola 1998, 214218, 281282) In contrast with classical cinema in its temporal and spatial closeness and clear causal relations, it is a typical tendency in Godards5 thinking to offer the syntagmatic continuity to paradigmatic fragmentariness and associativeness (Yl-Kotola 1998, 90). Fragmentariness and interactivity have appeared as conscious targets among other arts, too. In theatre for example, the tradi4

Syntagm can be defined as a combination of signs that fill a certain space: e.g. shoes, trousers, jacket, cap... (Tarasti 1990, 17). A syntagm consists of all the elements that are placed adjacently to each other (in bothand relation), elements that are present in a picture (Kuusamo 1990, 49). Paradigm is defined as an associative, alternative relation (Tarasti 1990, 17) that combines the present sign with the store of other possible signs (an eitheror relation). It characterises absent relations (Kuusamo 1990, 49), e.g. cap could be substituted by following (absent) alternatives: fur cap, brimmed hat, swimming cap, etc. 5 In the fragmentary style of Godard this is expressed by following characteristics: the narration is formed of jump cuts, monologues spoken to the camera, interviews, intertextual loans, scratching, and radical separation of image and sound. Time is described in motion, it is manipulated e.g. by slowing down. (Yl-Kotola 1998, 224)

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

203

tional Brechtian methods of alienation were directed towards pedagogic goals. Similarly, in the 1970s Gorin anticipated the cognitive and constructivist phase, and rejected the idea of behaviourist forced feeding in cinema. In his view a narration that makes the spectator think for himself and offers versatile constituents for this is progressive. (Yl-Kotola 2000) Also Eisenstein, especially in his early attraction montages of the 1920s, developed the theory and forms of fragmentary narration. Parallel to Eisenstein, Godard also emphasised the activity of the spectator in the cinematic experience. To Godard the blank association spaces between the fragments (pictures, texts and other hints) have a particular stimulating effect on thinking, helping the spectator to deal with the film and to construct the whole. These kinds of intentions, which connect together all these experiments viewing the fragmentariness of texts as a new dimension in audiovisual narration, mean at the same time an endeavour to see their connection on the mental level, as dialogic. Yl-Kotola, too, refers to the dialogic (or polylogic) nature of the spectators experience when he emphasises the text itself, i.e. the film, as a place of study and selfreflection where the film and the spectator on the basis of his or her own consciousness and outlook on life converse (YlKotola 1998, 214215). When the spectators experience in this way offers the viewer a possibility to observe critically his own attitudes to the films and ultimately empowers the spectator to choose, Yl-Kotola considers this kind of dialogism to be ethically justified. Godard, as well as other counter cinema advocates, see classical Hollywood films as narcotic, like a veil of fog that often succeeds in immersing the spectator into the story, but reduces the interaction to an automatic response. According to Bakhtin, the essence of dialogic relation is integrally tied to the concept of otherness. When a thought in a monologic world is either approved or denied, in a true dialogic and conversational re-

204

Ulla Oksanen

lationship it also becomes possible to understand other kinds of views.

TOTAL MENTAL IMAGE AND DIALOGIC SEMIOSIS

If an audiovisual experience is viewed as a multimedia interactive wholeness, worked out by a subject, a spectator, reader, listener, interpreter, writer, from fragmentary images, texts and sounds, it is, according to constructivist ideas, revived only after the synthesis which is produced by the subjects earlier experience and action. In the dynamic interactive dialogue/polylogue of the texts and the mental structures of the subject, the experience of the subject is referred to as a mental image. Astrid Sderbergh Widding, while actually engaged in studying the mental image in Eisensteins cinematic ideas, comes near the fundamental questions of the multimedia narration of today. She sees, like Eisenstein, that the basis for cinematic experience is formed by fragments which have presented themselves to be modified by the consciousness of the subject and which offer a possibility of building a total mental image on account of what is seen and experienced. In this action the user-subject (or spectator) constructs a total mental image or experience6 using his or her existing mental (cognitive) structures. The user-subject thus becomes an active partner in the dynamic drama, where he or she answers the impulses of the message and fundamentally gives birth in a dialogic relationship to his or her own mental image, and his or her own experience. When the message in the constructivist process is viewed as if it extended outside its own subject matter, it can
6

Sderbergh Widding does not define the concept of total mental image, but speculates at the end of the article on the possibility of expanding the concept to mean cinematic experience in totality. It is possible to assume that by total mental image she means implicitly cinematic experience.

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

205

never be considered final but instead indeterminate and open, always capable of being converted into a new (total) mental image. (Sderbergh Widding 1997, 11, 14) A multimedia message, too, is always the result of a construction process where the subject on both the physical and the mental level builds a synthesis out of fragments. This kind of multimedial experience is also a labile construction, which like a cinematic message is born and changed in a dialogic relationship. As said earlier, the concept of the mental image (viewed by Eisenstein as dynamic and interactive), also enables one to see the concept as dialogic. Gilles Deleuze described the relations created and reflected by it as the concept of la tiercit, the triad, referring to the pragmatist semiotician C.S. Peirce (Sderbergh Widding 1997, 11). According to Peirce: Thinking always proceeds in the form of a dialogue and it is essentially composed of signs, as its matter. (Peirce 19311958, 4.6; cited in Johansen 1993, ix, 189). A sign is for Peirce by its nature a mediating relationship (see Figure 1: Peirces concept of sign), which brings together three things: representamen (the sign-vehicle), object (the object to which it refers) and interpretant (its influence or the interpretation of it). For Peirce, the sign-vehicles, objects and interpretants may as well be material as mental, as well a thought as an action. (Veivo & Huttunen 1999, 41) So a sign for Peirce is a general and wide concept, anything that is related to another thing (Kuusamo 1990, 45): a picture, word, piece of music, symptom that represents something and can be interpreted somehow.

206

Ulla Oksanen

Figure 1 illustrates Peirces triadic conception of signs:

Figure 1. Peirces Triadic Conception of Signs (Huttunen & Veivo 1999, 41).

In Peirces pragmatist sign model, the topic of particular interest, from the viewpoint of dialogism, is its processual nature, which stresses the action of signs, as well as the contextuality of the model, which emphasises the temporal and spatial connections. The ability to extend beyond the apices of the triangle is also an essential part of the dynamics of Peirces model. Any interpretation may turn to a sign, which again can be interpreted (cf. Sderbergh Widdings mental image). The process is continuous, as is our whole culture, which, according to Octavio Paz, consists of an endless chain of interpretations. If we were to define one sign, it would be necessary to refer to another sign that again would refer to a third one, etc. (Tarasti 1990, 29) Meaning expands continually and is to be attained at the end points of these diverging paths. Sderbergh Widding (1997) seeks for such a dialogic model that would be capable of uniting audiovisual texts and multiple elements of spectatorship and letting them interact and bring new

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

207

kinds of information concerning the richness and complexity of the cinematic experience. Jrgen Dines Johansen, too, seems to aim at a similar goal as he has undertaken to develop consistently Peirces triadic model and complete it on the basis of Peirces own writings. This model will be presented in the following as an uniting view of semiosis, in which the central theme of the article: the communicational dialogism is realised and illustrated. Moreover, this reconstruction, based on Peirces triad, offers to act as a tentative visualisation of the dialogic semiosis which is active in any audiovisual narrative process.
token SIGN type INTERPRETER immediate object OBJECT DYNAMICAL OBJECT addressee immediate interpretant addresser DYNAMICAL INTERPRETANT FINAL INTERPRETANT UTTERER

Figure 2. Johansens Dialogic Model of Semiosis, (The Semiotic Pyramid) (Johansen 1993, 246).

Johansens new model is based essentially on C.S. Peirces dynamic and expanding view of the apices of the triangle and Roman Jacobsons concepts of communication (see Figure 2: Johansens Dialogic Model of Semiosis, The Semiotic Pyramid) (Johansen 1993, 246). The sign-vehicle (here: sign) presented in this figure may dynamically appear as an occasional concrete token, but it may also adopt the nature of a type, a rule. Similarly, a sign may refer to an object applying two aspects: dy-

208

Ulla Oksanen

namic and immediate. By a dynamic object Peirce means the real factor or reason affecting the sign, which is not usually seen by the addressee of the sign. Concerning the dynamic object (e.g. the reality of which a photograph is taken) affecting behind the sign, some kind of idea is, however, mediated in the sign process on the basis of the sign. This idea is called the immediate object (e.g. the reality as such that the photograph presents). (Veivo & Huttunen 1999, 4344) Johansens view of Peirces interpretant is also dynamic so that the immediate and dynamic objects also have their parallels: the immediate interpretant is the immediate and potential effect of the sign, whereas dynamic is its actual effect. In the former the intention of the addresser/utterer is strongly manifested, whereas the latter is dominated by the intention of the addressee/interpreter. The final interpretant, where the interpretation in theory is ended, includes the nucleus of Johansens interpretation process: the communicational interpretation, the dialogic act, where both the parties addresser/utterer and addressee/interpreter negotiate, and where they can reach a mutual agreement. (Johansen 1993, 169174) The worth of the model lies basically in its ability to illustrate and in this way add to the development of Peirces pragmatic semiotics and his view of semiosis. The three-dimensional pyramid also visualises in the semiosis the dialogic or communicational interpretation implied in Peirces thinking, which was made more widely known by his admirer Roman Jacobson, the developer of the classical communication model, in his own work (Johansen 1993, 190). It is also possible to see Sderbergh Widdings audiovisual experience and the total mental image illustrated in this model that unites the three parts: interpreter/addressee (e.g. the receiving function of the user-subject), the utterer/addresser (e.g. the writing function of the user-subject) and Peirces triadic (Figure 1) idea of semiosis (e.g. the message).

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

209

Similarly, her idea of the continual change, openness and ambiguousness of the interpretation and its tendency to expand outside itself is visualised by the arrows at the triangle apices which refer to their dynamism.

CONCLUDING WORDS

If the future is viewed from the viewpoint of Greimass three dimensions: temporality, spatiality and actoriality that determine the basic nature of audiovisual narration, it is possible to arrive at the following ideas: According to Yl-Kotola when the time and space experience in the telematic society continues to become weaker as principles that determine observing and representing the world, correspondingly unlinear ways to analyse data will become stronger (Yl-Kotola 1998, 321322, italics added). In this article in fact the same basic idea has been outlined by three permeating tendencies or threads, which are the changes (i) from monologism to dialogism, (ii) from diachrony to synchrony and (iii) from syntagm to paradigm. The concepts have been illustrated in separate connections with the verbal and audiovisual ideas of Vygotsky, Eisenstein, Bakhtin and Godard. These ideas can without exaggeration also be seen as profound displacements in narrative structures and as kinds of bridges to a new type of associative audiovisual narration and polysemic multimedial expression. Dialogue in its Bakhtinian and Vygotskyan sense is the undivided origin of all knowledge, thought, and thus also learning (Tella, Mononen-Aaltonen & Kynslahti 1998, 38). It is also the central idea of the semiotic approach to audiovisual communication in this article. Johansens model of dialogic semiosis or the semiotic pyramid can be considered as such a pragmatic semiotic view of how meanings come into existence and change in the dialogic interaction and communication process, even in the

210

Ulla Oksanen

studying and learning process while working and reflecting with an educational multimedia program.7 In the same chapter this model is also presented as a dialogic total mental image, which the subject constructs. In the frame of reference of media education, the presented model could tentatively be considered a junction of the communication and mediation flows that stream on the highest level of the multidimensional model, a semiosis where the signs of the background flows intersect and create new signs and new meanings.

REFERENCES

Aarseth, E. 1999. Kyberteksti nkkulmia ergodiseen kirjallisuuteen (Cybertext: Views on Ergodic Literature). Parnasso 3, 264. (in Finnish) Bahtin, M. 1991. Dostojevskin poetiikan ongelma. (Problems of Dostoevskys poetics; translated by C. Emerson.) Helsinki: Orient Express. (in Finnish) Broms, H. 1984. Alkukuvien jljill: Kulttuurin semiotiikka. Porvoo: WSOY. (in Finnish) Eisenstein, S. 1978. Elokuvan muoto. Helsinki: Love. (in Finnish) Hietala, V. 1994. Tunteesta teesiin. Helsinki: Kirjastopalvelu. (in Finnish) Holquist, M. 1990. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press. Jalander, Y. 1990. Eisensteinin elokuvateorioista. (On Eisensteins Cinematic Theories.) Teoksessa Kinisjrvi, R., Lukkarila, M. & Malmberg, T. (toim.) Elokuvateorian historia. (History of Cinematic Theory.) Helsinki: Like, 5884. (in Finnish) Johansen, J.D. 1993. Dialogic Semiosis. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1993. Sana, dialogi ja romaani. (Word, Dialogue, and Novel.) Teoksessa Puhuva subjekti. (The Speaking Subject.) Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2150. (in Finnish)
7

The model also pays attention to the new possible user functions in cybertextual communication allowing the subject to adopt e.g. a writing function. (Aarseth 1999).

From Inner Speech to Dialogic Semiosis

211

Kuusamo, A. 1990. Kuvien edess. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. (in Finnish) Lehtonen, M. 1998. Merkitysten maailma. Tampere: Vastapaino. (in Finnish) Lotman, J. Merkkien maailma. (The World of Signs.) 1989. Helsinki: SN-kirjat. (in Finnish) Malmberg, T. 1974. Vertov ja Eisenstein: Neuvostoelokuvan perinteiden ajankohtaisuudesta. Helsinki: Suomen elokuvakerhojen liitto ry:n julkaisusarja 3. (in Finnish) Norvig, P. & Lakoff, G. 1987. Taking a Study in Lexical Network Theory. In Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society. Berkeley California, 195206. (Cited in Yl-Kotola 1998) Peirce, C. S. 19311958. Collected Papers IVIII. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss & A. Burks (eds.). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press Sderbergh Widding, A. 1997. Mentaalinen kuva mietteit elokuvaelmyksest (The Mental ImageVisions of Cinematic Experience). Lhikuva 23, 714. (in Finnish) Tarasti, E. 1990. Johdatusta semiotiikkaan. Helsinki: Gaudeamus. (in Finnish) Tella, S. & Mononen-Aaltonen, M. 1998. Developing Dialogic Communication Culture in Media Education: Integrating Dialogism and Technology. Media Education Centre. Department of Teacher Education. University of Helsinki. Media Education Publications 7. [http://www.helsinki.fi/~tella/mep7.html] Tella, S. & Mononen-Aaltonen, M. 2000. Towards Network-Based Education: A Multidimensional Model for Principles of Planning and Evaluation. (In this volume) Tella, S., Mononen-Aaltonen, M. & Kynslahti, H. in collaboration with Nummi, T., Passi, A., Ristola, R., Sariola, J., Vahtivuori, S. & Wager, P. 1998. Towards a Communal Curriculum: Strategic Planning and the Emerging Knowledge of Media Education. In Tella, S. (ed.) Aspects of Media Education: Strategic Imperatives in the Information Age. Media Education Centre. Department of Teacher Education. University of Helsinki. Media Education Publications 8, 184. [http://www.helsinki.fi/~tella/mep8cc.html] Veivo, H. & Huttunen, T. 1999. Semiotiikka: merkeist mieleen ja kulttuuriin. Helsinki: Edita. (in Finnish)

212

Ulla Oksanen

Willemen, P. 1983. Cinematic Discourse: The Problem of Inner Speech. In Heath, S. & Mellencamp, P. (eds.) Cinema and language. Los Angeles: The American Film Institute. (Cited in Hietala 1994, 49) Wertsch, J.V. 1980. The significance of dialogue in Vygotskys account of social, egocentric, and inner speech. Contemporary Educational Psychology 5, 150162. (Cited in Tella, S. & Mononen-Aaltonen, M. 1998) Wollen, P. 1977. Merkityksen ongelma elokuvassa. (Signs and meaning in the Cinema.) Helsinki: Gaudeamus. (in Finnish) Vygotski, L. 1982. Ajattelu ja kieli. (Thought and Language.) Espoo: Weilin+Gs. (in Finnish) Yl-Kotola, M. 1998. Jean-Luc Godard mediafilosofina: rekonstruktio simulaatiokulttuurin lhtkohdista. Mediatieteen julkaisuja B 1. Lapin yliopisto. Taiteiden tiedekunta. (in Finnish) Unprinted Reference Yl-Kotola, M. 2000. Uusmedian semiotiikka -luennot Helsingin yliopistossa 1314.4.2000. Semiotiikan opintosuunta. (in Finnish)